A Tidy Armageddon

by BH Panhuyzen

Overview

The world is transformed into what looks like a massive warehouse overnight, and the results is a suspenseful and action-rich tale as humanity is forced to face the scale of its consumption

The world is utterly transformed: every product of human creation has been organized by an unknown hand into a vast grid of nine-story blocks, each comprised of a single item type: watering cans, lighthouses, fake Christmas trees, helicopters, plastic spoons, and everything else Earth’s culture and technology have ever produced, stacked in homogenous towers and separated by a maze of passageways.

Navigating this depopulated environment, a small contingent of diverse soldiers tries to make sense of this enigmatic apocalypse while desperately searching for survivors. They are led by Elsie Sharpcot, a Cree woman who has endured the military’s rampant racism and misogyny, and Dorian Wakely, her PTSD-afflicted second-in-command. Both veterans of the war in Afghanistan, they lead a group of army misfits while they all struggle — against the elements and each other — to survive.

Passing with fear and wonder through this museum of human achievement, provisioning themselves from its resources, the group races to outrun the approaching winter and find a home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781778521089
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	04/25/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	408
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

BH Panhuyzen, an author of two previous novels and a collection of stories, lives in Toronto with three humans, a dog, and a cat, plus works as an independent software developer. BH fears that all this personal recycling, squishing every cereal box and milk carton, might not be working.

Editorial Reviews

02/20/2023

Panhuyzen (The Sky Manifest) explores some fascinating ideas in this apocalyptic tale of Canadian soldiers trekking through a radically altered North American landscape, but gets bogged down in mundane details. Sgt. Elisabeth Sharpcot is mysteriously ordered to take her section of soldiers—eight men and women, including herself—into an underground bunker. When they emerge three weeks later, the world as they knew it is gone. In its place, all of humanity’s goods and detritus have been sorted by type into nine-story-tall blocks by some mysterious force. As the soldiers traverse the grid made up by this uncanny assemblage and search for other human survivors and answers, the characters’ gripping internal and external struggles are interrupted by lists of the subcategories of goods found in each block (“The collection included plain brown tubes, plus many branded Sonotube, Bomix, Formatube, Newform, Tubbox, Quik-Tube, Handiforms, and Caraustar EASY-POUR”), which quickly becomes tiresome, particularly as the journey grows increasingly bleak and questions remain unanswered. Readers will struggle to get through this one. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Samuel Beckett meets Stephen King in an absurd and eerie coming-of-end tale that should serve as some sort of warning (but probably won’t).” — Peter Darbyshire, author of Has the World Ended Yet?

“In this unique twist on postapocalyptic science fiction, the suspense and action seamlessly entwine, capturing the audience's imagination with every turn. An excellent addition to any audio sci-fi collection.” — Library Journal Audio book Review

“A Tidy Armageddon is a gorgeous, provocative, pitch-perfect conceptual art piece in the literary lineage of Tom McCarthy’s Remainder and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I was immersed from the first page into a world resembling an enormous and very organized megastore, where capitalism’s last breath chastened and delighted me. Had God’s hand rearranged all the things just so, or was it an advanced alien civilization? No, it was BH Panhuyzen in passionate authority presenting me with the end of the world in a way never before imagined. Unforgettable. ” — Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, author of All the Broken Things and Wait Softly Brother

“This book is the furthest apocalypse from Mad Max that you can get. Instead, it’s a transfixing and brilliant attack on consumerism and, in a way, humanity’s inability to look before we leap...If you want an almost literary fiction apocalypse novel (like The Road or Station Eleven) that contains quite a few tropes but in ways you don’t expect, you should totally check this out.” — Post Apocalyptic Media

From the Publisher

06/10/2024

Panhuyzen (The Sky Manifest) explores a world transformed. After emerging from an underground bunker, eight soldiers discover that their new world resembles a colossal warehouse with everything sorted into categories, from spoons to fake Christmas trees to toilets. The soldiers find themselves at the heart of this spectacle, only to discover that people have inexplicably vanished. As they search for survivors and seek answers, Panhuyzen's critique of human excess becomes ever more poignant. The narrative interweaves several themes, including consumerism, misogyny, and sexual harassment. Brianne Tucker's skillful performance paints vivid portraits of the characters, conveying their internal struggles and external challenges with equal believability. Listeners are drawn into the depths of their emotions and fears as they navigate this perplexing world. This dystopian eco-novel offers a fresh perspective on the genre, exploring profound themes within a riveting listening experience. Panhuyzen's prose and Tucker's exemplary narration combine for a thought-provoking journey that resonates long after the story's end. VERDICT In this unique twist on postapocalyptic science fiction, the suspense and action seamlessly entwine, capturing the audience's imagination with every turn. An excellent addition to any audio sci-fi collection.—Jigisha Patel

Library Journal - Audio